(Ottawa) Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne has asked telecommunications companies to agree within 60 days on emergency roaming, mutual assistance during outages and a communication protocol to better inform Canadians and authorities in the event of an emergency.
Posted at 5:30 p.m.
He also says the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) will investigate the Rogers outage.
Mr Champagne made the announcement on Twitter today after meeting with leaders of the country’s major telecommunications companies following the massive Rogers network outage late last week.
The purpose of the meeting was “to demand that they take immediate action to improve the resilience and reliability of our networks”, he said.
Emergency roaming would give customers the option of switching to another operator in the event of a breakdown.
“It’s very similar to what the Federal Communications Commission has done in the United States,” Champagne said during a conference call with reporters on Monday.
The minister says the outage is ‘unacceptable’ and his announcement is only a ‘first step’ by his government as Canadians deserve better from their suppliers when it comes to quality and reliability of service.
He said the outage “affected people across the country, emergency services, small and medium businesses and payment systems. »
Champagne said he will ensure businesses meet the high standards Canadians expect, including improving competition, innovation and affordability.
He, however, did not say whether the outage will prompt new policies to promote competition in the telecommunications industry.
Keldon Bester, a fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation and co-founder of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project, said the outage highlights the need for more competition in Canadian telecommunications.
While increasing competition is the most crucial course of action, he says there are other policies that can help mitigate the impact of outages, including allowing roaming to occur. urgency and meeting the exclusivity requirements of condominiums.
A Rogers spokesperson said in a statement ahead of Monday’s meeting that the company and other industry peers will meet with Champagne “to discuss increasing the resilience of Canada’s telecommunications network.”
“We support initiatives that further strengthen Canada’s critical telecommunications infrastructure. »
Mr. Champagne said there was unanimity among all companies on the need for change. “Everyone recognized that this was unacceptable, that we needed to work together for better reliability and quality, and there is certainly a willingness to learn from each other,” he said.
Public explanations requested
The widespread Rogers service outage began Friday morning and lasted at least 15 hours.
Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri attributed the outage to a network system failure after a maintenance update.
Some customers reported service outages extending into Sunday, and Rogers issued a statement acknowledging that some were still experiencing service outages that were described as intermittent.
In a statement, the critic for innovation, science and industry, Gérard Deltell, said that Canadians should get an explanation of what happened as well as the measures taken to ensure that this kind failure does not happen again.
“Rogers and government officials need to answer these questions publicly,” said Deltell.
The New Democratic Party (NDP) has called on the Liberals and the CRTC to launch a formal investigation into the Rogers outage.
“Having Minister Champagne meet Rogers as a top priority shows the Liberals are determined to protect the profits of telecom giants instead of helping Canadians,” NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said in a statement ahead of the meeting. Minister’s announcement.
Singh said he was “considering” having Rogers, Interac and Minister Champagne appear in committee to shed light on what happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again.